Vocabulary Notes:

1. survive – пережить, выдержать, уцелеть

2. children facilities – детские учреждения

3. earn- зарабатывать

4. breadwinner – кормилец (семьи)

5. salary – зарплата

6. mature – зрелый

7. childminder (Br.E.)– няня; человек , присматривающий за детьми, когда родители

отсутствуют или заняты

8. nursery – ясли

Text 4 Family Forms and Trends in the usa

Saralee Jamieson, Human Environmental Sciences Specialist, and

Lisa Wallace, Human Development Specialist University of Missouri Extension

Families are crucial in the development of human competence and character. Recent research tells us that the family's influence is even greater than we have imagined. Families play a major role in how well children do in school, how well they perform on the job as adults and how well they contribute to society in general. Families have the first and foremost influence on our development.

Family units take a variety of forms, all of which involve individuals living under one roof.

Married nuclear families: in these families, both adults are the biological or adoptive parents of children. There are three types of married nuclear families depending on employment status of the woman and man. In the first type, the man works outside the home while the woman works inside the home caring for the children. According to the 2000 U.S. Census, 28 percent of all households fit this description.

In the second type of married nuclear family, the woman works outside the home and the man cares for the children. This constitutes 2 percent of the families in the USA.

In the third kind of married nuclear family, both the husband and the wife work outside the home or are income providers. In some situations, the woman might have a home-based business, such as a day care center. Nearly 60 percent of women with children under the age of six were in the workforce during the past decade.

Single-parent families: in this family there is only one parent in the home. Due to high divorce rates and adults choosing not to marry, this is currently the fastest growing family form in America. More than half of all children will spend some of their lives in a single-parent family. Currently, 88 percent of these families are headed by women.

Step families: these families are generally created by divorce and remarriage rather than by the death of the mother or father. In step families, biologically unrelated children often live in the same household. There are 9,000 new step families being created each week in the United States..

Cohabitation families: two unmarried adults who are committed to a long-term relationship and, sometimes, children from this union or from previous relationships are included. This can include heterosexual or homosexual partners.

Cross-generational families: two or more adults from different generations of a family, who intend to share a household during the foreseeable future. This family type may include children. Sometimes children are raised by their grandparents when their biological parents have died or no longer can take care of them. The number of these families has increased by 40 percent in the past ten years. In addition, many grandparents take some primary responsibility for child care, particularly when both parents work.

Joint/shared-custody families: in these families, children are legally raised by both parents who are not living together. Generally, the children move back and forth between the residences of each parent, depending on the legal agreement between the parents.

Foster and group-home families: foster parents and institutional child-care workers often provide a substitute family for children referred by the courts or government agencies. While problems with their parents or guardians are being resolved, the children may live in these families.

These changes in family forms in recent decades did not take place in a vacuum. They were a product of our society's complex industrial, technological, and social changes. These changes forged new prevailing attitudes about women working outside of the home, about divorce, and about single adults.